They must follow the basic structure of the original Walkabout. Every post should look essentially like that, but feel free to add and subtract elements wherever is appropriate.

Stay out of the defaults. Those are well-known enough that doing a post on them is pretty pointless. Everyone pretty much knows how those work.

Don't be completely negative. This isn't a place to do nothing but complain about shitty subs, though that certainly isn't against the rules. Walkabouts can also cover really good areas of Reddit. There's room for both ends of the spectrum here.

Put effort into these. There's no point in a lazy post!

Don't act like an idiot. This should be obvious, really.

Looking for subreddits to write about? Using the RANDOM button is a great way to find smaller subs that don't normally get a lot of exposure. If you find a subreddit that would be great Walkabout fodder, but you don't feel like writing one yourself, suggest it for someone else.

That's pretty much it. Time to get walking.

NOTE: If your submission isn't showing up, it probably got caught in the spam filter. Don't panic, just message the mods and it'll be taken care of as soon as possible.

Hey folks! Happy December. It's the time of year again where holidays, finals, work, family, relationships, and everything else all come together to create a stressful environment, one that causes us to need a little inspiration (and perspective!). For some, /r/Frisson is that place. From the sidebar:

Have you ever felt a sudden, passing sensation of excitement, a shudder of emotion from an epic moment of a song, or a climax of a movie? That is what is called "frisson", a word rooted from the French word meaning "Goosebumps" or "Shiver". It has been linked to rises in dopamine levels.

I know that sounds good to me right about now! Let's take a closer look at what this subreddit is all about.

The Basics

Purpose: To collect instances of media that can produce frisson in the viewer. This ranges from comics to videos to music--anything that might give a person chills or provoke a positive emotional reaction.

Membership: 32,827, as of 6/12/12

Community since: 1 year

Effort:

From the top 50 posts of all time:

Image

Video

Self

45

3

1

As you may have noticed, that doesn't equal 50. The missing submission is a link to an announcement that /r/Frisson was being honored as subreddit of the day for April 27, 2012.

This overall trend is the opposite of the current frontpage, which has a significantly higher amount of videos. Videos don't tend to garner as many upvotes in /r/Frisson, however, unless they're extremely moving. Images are generally more popular.

Tropes:

Science, space, the occasional movie soundtrack, famous speeches, comics having to do with confronting childhood fears or with picking yourself up and moving on when life gets difficult. Generally anything that might give you a sense that things are larger than your current circumstances. I think that's why the space videos tend to be so popular, because it appeals to the overall reddit trend of loving pop-science while simultaneously imbuing the viewer with a sense of wonder about the ~outside world.

Mods:

Final Thoughts

While some of the content in /r/Frisson can be predictable (DAE space?) it's an enjoyable place to spend some time. Not many submissions actually give me frisson, but the ones that do are really amazing. There's probably going to be something to your taste there, but to avoid the tropes, sort by new. If music posts are more your thing, you'll find some good stuff there.

One danger that subreddits of this kind have is devolving into a place to share things that make you go, "oh, cool!" not that actually give you an emotional or physical reaction. While /r/Frisson can fall into this trap with some of the recycled content, it is overall a subreddit that stays on topic. Submissions are pretty frequent, with maybe an hour or two between them, but most tend to stay with low scores unless they touch on one of the subreddit hot-buttons.

Well done! I love /r/Frisson, and I'm consistently surprised by the quality of the submissions. Frisson is such a subjective feeling that there's a lot of room for argument, but the userbase remains pretty civil most of the time.